Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs)

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to attend the 3rd National Workshop of ARRPET. This workshop was organized by the Chemical Engineering Dept. of DLSU-Manila. Since I have an elective course under one of the department’s professors, I was required to attend the said event. I would say that the time I’ve spent there was very worthy. I had the chance to meet several professionals who are doing research works on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). By the way, most of them are chemical engineers and 90% of them have their PhDs. Isn’t that amazing? Plus, I have learned so many things about these POPs, and knowing about their existence and what they can do, can be really frightening. Another thing that’s great about this workshop is the free food and free entrance. I would tell you, the food is really yummy! Plus, the hotel (Angelo King hotel of DLSU-Benilde) is really elegant and cosy! I’m glad I’ve forced myself to go there, because at first, I really didn’t want to attend, but since it’s free and the place is near my school, why not?

Let’s discuss these POPs. According to the Stockholm Convention,

“Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) are chemical substances that persist in the environment, bioaccumulate through the food web, and pose a risk of causing adverse effects to human health and the environment. With the evidence of long-range transport of these substances to regions where they have never been used or produced and the consequent threats they pose to the environment of the whole globe, the international community has now, at several occasions called for urgent global actions to reduce and eliminate releases of these chemicals.”

It’s scary, right? Most of these POPs are used in pesticides, and if these pesticides are not yet banned in our country, if they’re still being used, there is a big risk posed in every Filipino’s health. Actually, this is not only for Filipinos, but for the rest of humanity.

In my next entries, I’d be discussing more about these POPs and the Dirty Dozen as labeled by the Stockholm Convention. If you have the time, please make some entries on POPs, too. It’s really scary, especially when I think of my baby, who will grow up to be surrounded by these POPs. Common, help me in disseminating information on POPs, may be in this simple way, we can help our generation and the future generation to live longer lives.

My family day at Enchanted Kingdom


Last Sunday, we had the opportunity to go to Enchanted Kingdom (EK) at Sta. Rosa, Laguna. My brother who went home from Dubai was the financier, so we did not worry about the money. Actually, we had planned to go there for almost two times – July and December of last year. I think it is just fate that those plans did not push through. I have thought of two reasons for that. First, because we can go there when the right opportunity comes, such as last Sunday — we didn’t need to spend that big money for the entrance. Second, we wouldn’t enjoy the experience if we would go there without any relative. Originally, we planned to visit the place, just the three of us. But last Sunday, I realized that it was more fun to have a relative to take care of Zoe while JE and I are checking some of the rides that are definitely not for kids, such as roller coaster and up, up and away. I am so thankful for the opporunity; it’s quite tiring, but lots of fun goes with this experience, especially when I saw the pretty smile on my baby’s face that was brought by this magical day at EK.

The Launching of Wikiseek

I am a great fan of Google. It’s a very helpful search engine who’s been my friend ever since I started my college days. Right now, I’m doing a search on birthday party games for my daughter’s birthday on February 13 using Google. Then, while I’m checking Mybloglog account, I saw Megite’s site. I’ve checked out this site, and I’ve found very informative articles, very up-to-date. The latest info there is about the launch of Wikiseek, a vastly improved search engine for Wikipedia (another favorite reference site). I’ve also found some discussions on this topic such as “Wikiseek as a threat to the Google Empire”. Well, there’s so much to happen in the future. Let’s just wait and see who will reign over.

Fun and Tearful Weekend

I’ve just finished doing my powerpoint presentation for my laboratory class this afternoon. So now, I have time to update my blog. I was not able to do so during the weekend, for I spent most of my time playing with my pretty daughter, Zoe. That was really fun! Also, JE, Zoe and I have watched two movies, namely: Sandlot2 and Click.

Let me tell you something about those movies if you haven’t watched them.

Sandlot is about a group of kids playing softball. This game is just like baseball to me. I’m not a sporty girl, so I don’t know the difference (need to research on that one).

Here’s the synopsis (courtesy of my favorite site – www.wikipedia.org):

“The movie is set in 1972, 10 years after the events of The Sandlot. New kids have moved into the neighborhood of San Fernando Valley in Southern California, and have started playing baseball in the sandlot from the first movie. The previous kids have all grown and moved away. A young boy named Johnnie Smalls (James Willson), the younger brother of Scotty Smalls, the narrator of the first movie, has heard the legend of “The Beast”/Hercules owned by Mr. Mertle, who lives behind the sandlot. David Durango (Max-Lloyd Jones) is the leader of the five boys. Then, three girls join the team, one of them named Hailey Goodfairer (Samantha Burton),. The girls were league softball players, and Hailey always pitches the ball underhand. She starts to develop feelings for David, and it is revealed that he may have feelings for Hailey. In one scene, they challenge a little league team and the lead player hurts Hailey by hitting her in the belly. David punches him, telling him that no boy should ever hit a girl.

One day, when the kids’ ball goes over the large fence of Mr. Mertle and they try to retrieve it, Johnnie makes them stop by showing them that there’s something descended from the Beast on the other side, called “The Great Fear.” That night, Johnnie tells them the story of the Great Fear, how it used to be a junkyard dog, eating or hurting others who trespassed the junk yard. There was a boy who loved the comic book hero named Rapid Rocket, and would run around fast like him. On his first day of school, he went past Mr. Mertle’s house but forgot to lock the back gate, and The Great Fear got out and chased the boy. It was unknown what happened to him after he was cornered by the killer dog at the junkyard. Soon afterward, a fence made of assorted junk was built on top of Mr. Mertle’s fence, and he was ordered by the officials to keep the dog locked up forever. Ever since, if anything went over the fence, it would not come out.

The main conflict comes when the space rocket for the future of NASA and the United States built by Hailey’s father is blown over the fence, because Johnnie accidentally sets it off. The kids try many things to get it back, including hiring the one called The Retriever (Griffin Reilly Evans), but he fails, and retires from his job (even though he never really had one). Then, just like Benny Rodriguez from the first film, David is chased by the monstrous dog all over town. It is shown that he was the young boy from so long ago who was chased by the dog, revealed by the Rapid Rocket cape that he brings with him. When they get back to the sandlot, David falls onto the ground on the other side of the fence, and into a deep ditch. The dog then digs him up, and saves him from suffocation. David sees his tag, which says that his real name is Goliath (a play on the title of the Biblical story David and Goliath). The boys then meet the blind Mr. Mertle (James Earl Jones), who tells them that the same situation happened in the summer of 1962, how the boys got something over the fence, and how he could have gotten it for them. Johnnie was able to save the rocket, and David and Hailey become boyfriend and girlfriend. The movie ends with the revelation of what happened to all the boys when they left the sandlot.”

This movie is just fine, we picked this one for Zoe would be watching with us, and we wanted a movie that doesn’t have kissing scenes and adult scenes (though this movie has one kissing scene, just before the ending). In a scale of 10, I would give this movie a 6. If you want to know more about this movie, you can visit these sites: Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb (Earth’s Biggest Movie Database).

Another movie that we have watched is a movie of Adam Sandler, “Click”. This movie really made me cry…

I know that most of you had watched this movie, so I won’t include the plot here. For photos, trailer, and if you want to know the plo of the story, you can go to these helpful links: about:humor and counting down.

I really love weekends! I can spend quality time with my family, and I got to watch movies I didn’t see inside a moviehouse. I always look forward to this part of the week.

Nice Photos taken from Misamis Occidental Aquamarine Park in Illigan

How do you spend your holidays? Wouldn’t it be good to just relax, spend time with family and visit extraordinary places? Well, last Christmas vacation, I was not able to do the out-of-town part with my family, but I was able to spend quality time with them.

All the people spend their holidays differently, and here’s one lucky guy who have visited a very beautiful place in Illigan called Misamis Occidental Aquamarine Park. I just love his pictures! Nice work, man!

Helpful Links from a Friend

I was not able to make a post yesterday due to my enrollment conflicts. Finally, I’ve paid the required amount already, and I can now have a peaceful day.

While I’ve been checking my email, I saw a message from a friend in my recently registered Mybloglog account. It’s a good thing I’ve registered for that one. He gave me these links, you can check them out if you want to: Highest-paid Adsense, Lemon Apparel Sourcing, Apparel Designs . Thanks Vignesh Prabhu!

I guess this is my post for now. I will try to make one later, but first, I need to do other things.

My desperate need for Home-based jobs

I haven’t write a post for almost 5 days now. It’s because everytime I sat in front of our computer, my hand keeps on clicking the mouse and looking for home-based jobs in google. My extra time was spent on this for the past days.

Well, I saw so many ads looking for typists, encoders, telecommuters, but almost 90% of them are asking for money. They’re saying that they need the money for the software and for programs needed to start the typing job. A first , I became interested. But after learning that most of them are scams, i’ve learned to close the window when I saw money involved.

You might ask, why look for a home-based job if I am currently employed by DLSU. The answer is I feel that I need to help my husband in our financial needs. As I am currently taking my MS degree, I am not earning that much, for I am a part time instructor only. The other reason is I would like to take advantage of the availability of our internet connection. I am starting to like the internet.

This morning, while surfing the net and continuing my search for those work from home jobs, I ran across Alfa Mercado’s blog. She’s also a Filipina, and she’s one of those internet savvy people who are fond of blogging. She has posted articles on different home-based jobs, and I am really glad I have found her site. Her posts are very helpful and informative. Thanks Alfa!

That’s it for now. I still need to fix my things for school this afternoon. Today is the start of classes for the third term of school year 2006-2007 at DLSU-Manila. I hope everything will run smoothly for me.

SFI and Gery Carson: Are they for real?

Yesterday, I woke up early because I have a laboratory meeting at DLSU. I checked my mail before taking a bath. I saw another email from the “SFI Marketing Group”. It says in that email that I have now 15816 affiliates under me. How did that happen?!

Two weeks ago, I was searching the net for some jobs online that I can do to have some extra income. I came across this group: SFI Marketing Group (you can google the name, I can not make a link, I dunno why). After doing the registration for free, I have received so many email messages from the said group, telling me that I should advance to Executive Affiliate (EA) position. Yesterday, their message contains the 15k+ affiliates listed under my account, and they were telling me that I should advance to EA position to start getting the commissions from my affiliates. After seeing the number of my affiliates, I became interested in their company. I started viewing the page on how to advance to EA position, and then I saw that to do that, I need to buy their products or sell their products. I saw one product that I can sell to give me 10 Sales Volume Points (SVP). When I have these 10 SVP already, I will become an EA (that’s what they have said). At that time, I was so impressed with how their system works, and how they’re so organized. They even have pics of their products, staff, office and warehouse. I thought that was quite amazing. I even told this to my husband, I told him that I want to try this online business.

This morning, I have checked the site again, and I try to google every name related to SFI: Gery Carson, SFI Marketing Group, Carson Services. The first few pages showed positive results for the group, but I have found some forums and blogs stating that SFI is a BIG SCAM! I suddenly gained my consciousness, I do not need to pay attention to this SFI group. May be it is true that they will send you pay checks as your commission from your sales and that of your affiliates, but that may be true for the first few months. I haven’t given them any money yet (thank God!), but just by doing some research on them and analyzing how their system works, I am convinced that SFI and Gery Carson will not help me earn more money.

I am looking for some jobs on the internet, because I need extra cash for my tuition (I am currently taking my MS degree at DLSU-Manila). I am also teaching there as a part time laboratory instructor, so for the past terms, my tuition fee was free. But for this new term, there are some subjects that I need to pay on my own (one subject that I need to re-take and unfinished thesis). I got really interested in this SFI thing, but I am glad that I didn’t give away that $35.

Lesson from this experience:
Before you jump into a new situation, do some research and think it over and over again.

May this experience of mine help those who are thinking of joining Gery Carson and his buddies.

New year…I should be up for a fresh start

It’s the third day of the year 2007. Would it be a good day? Would 2007 be a good year for me and my family? Hope everything goes well for the three of us and for the rest of our relatives.

I was not able to talk about how we spent our New Year’s Eve. Well, here it goes…

We went to my uncle’s house on December 31, because my parents requested that our family spend the year-end celebration with them in Batangas. I would say the event was better than our Christmas Eve celebration. I am not saying this because the latter was spent with my in-laws. It’s better because there were a larger number of people in Batangas whom we’ve spent the evening. There were my parents, brother, cousins, uncle and tita. Plus, I got to visit the remaining brother and sisters of my beloved lola. I wish them good health and longer life. Another thing that happened there was we had the chance to chat with my brother in Korea and my another brother and sis-in-law in Dubai. We even saw them through the newly-bought webcam of my cousin (courtesy of JE and I). It was nice to see them again:) It felt good to have a chit-chat with my siblings once in a while. But I do admit, it’s much better to just have a chat using keyboard than to use the headphone. Well, it’s because there comes a time when the conversation stops and its quite awkward to just be there and say nothing than “ah” and “okay” (JE agrees with me on this one). I guess I’m not that talkative.

One more thing that happened on the last day of 2006 was Zoe fell down while running around Ninong Nitoy’s house. She got a bleeding lips when I saw her. It was not a very nice scene to look at. My poor baby… Plus, after an hour or two, I saw some wounds on her cheek, nose and leg. I guess it is just normal for a child to experience something like that in her life. At least now, she would be more careful (hopefully!).

On January 1, 2007, we spent the day running around (running after Zoe), eating crispy fried pork, singing using the “Magic sing” microphone, and catching up with siblings & friends using the internet. When Kuya Wen (my eldest brother who went home from Dubai–it’s just for the holidays) arrived after spending some time with his girlfriend, we started to place our baggage inside the van and prepare to leave. At around 8PM, we arrived at my in-laws house (my MIL was watching TV when we entered the house; my FIL was out spending some time with his friends). We told her some of the things that happened in Batangas. She mentioned that my bro-in-law’s wife, with her son and relatives dropped by to say hi and bring some gifts. They left a gift for Zoe, a set of eggs with shape sorter feature. Zoe likes it:) It’s just bothering me that we were not able to give Zoe’s gift for JA(my BIL’s son). During the Christmas, I thought he will not be able to pay us a visit, so I decided to give the gift (red car) for him to my husband’s other nephew Enrique. Then, I opened the original gift for Enrique (green car) and gave it to Zoe because she’s been eyeing that car when we were wrapping the gifts. Good thing, JA got hold of the green car when they dropped by on Jan.1, played with it and brought it home with him. At least it looks like that’s our gift for him, though it’s not wrapped. We’ll just buy something for him on his upcoming birthday.

All in all, our year-end celebration is fun. I hope this 2007 will be good to us. I should catch up on my astrology readings. I should know the description of “year of the pig”. I should know what’s in store for us in the year 2007… that’s what Tita Rose has said to JE and I. 🙂

Note: You can check out our pics in here.